Spacemesh

The core of Spacemesh's architecture is its proprietary Proof of Space-Time (PoST) consensus mechanism. This protocol allows individuals, referred to as "Smeshers," to participate in securing the network by allocating unused hard drive space, a process called "Smeshing". Unlike PoW, which requires intensive computational power, or PoS, which necessitates capital investment, PoST leverages underutilized storage, significantly lowering the barrier to entry and energy consumption. Participants need a minimum of 256 GiB of disk space to start Smeshing and are guaranteed a share of rewards proportional to their allocated storage, eliminating the competitive, race-based nature of mining found in other protocols. The protocol uses a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) structure, known as a blockmesh, which allows for multiple blocks to be processed in parallel, aiming to support thousands of transactions per second.

The company's business model is centered on the native coin, $SMH, which is awarded to Smeshers for their participation in validating transactions and securing the network. Spacemesh has successfully raised a total of $18 million in two funding rounds. A seed round in May 2018 brought in $3 million from investors including BRM Group and iAngels. This was followed by a $15 million Series A round in September 2018, led by Polychain and including notable investors like Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, and Bain Capital. The tokenomics design specifies that 93.75% of the total 2.4 billion SMH supply is minted over time as block rewards, with the remaining 6.25% reserved for the team and investors, subject to a vesting schedule.